Abstract
According to Commission’s Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, lifelong learning must accompany a successful transition to a knowledge-based economy and society promoting active citizenship and employability. The Memorandum recognizes that in order to put lifelong learning into practice, a variety of partnerships are needed including private and public establishments, regional and local bodies, social partners, and civil society organizations. The chapter focuses on conceptual and governance issues with regard to lifelong learning and identifies significant actors, governance instruments, and governance practices in an emerging transnational educational space. In the governance of lifelong learning, the state is not the only player, but a whole set of different actors that are increasingly infiltrating its policy-making domain. Nevertheless, there is empirical evidence that the adoption of lifelong learning at national level is significantly path dependent, i.e., influenced by national and culture-specific semantic traditions.
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- 1.
The international comparative project was funded by the Hans-Böckler-Foundation and the University of Tübingen (Germany). The project was based on the theoretical approaches of path-dependent development and actor-centered institutionalism both emanating from political science. The methods applied were document analysis, expert interviews, and comparative analysis of educational monitoring and reporting systems.
- 2.
The current economic crisis dramatically confirms the dynamics and mutual interdependencies of various actors and the immanent difficulties of sufficient management and control of the economic system by the political system.
- 3.
The origin of the term governance comes from Greek (“kybernein”) and it initially meant the steering of ships. The Latin term “gubernare” was used both for steering of ships and governing a state.
- 4.
Supranational organizations such as the European Union (EU) have due to their constituting treaties legal power to shape national policy in some fields (e.g., economics, labor market). The EU has no legislative competencies in the education field, as stated in the Treaties of Maastricht (Article 126 & 127) and of Amsterdam (Article 149 & 150), but it can strongly influence national education policy through policy formation in other fields.
- 5.
International organizations such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are influential actors even if, due to their intergovernmental structure, they have no regulative capacities upon their member states. Their power derives from their agenda-setting capacity and their existence as policy-making arenas.
- 6.
The conceptual framework for the ELLI-Index (cf. Hoskins et al. 2010) is loosely based on the UNESCO’s International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century (Delors et al 1996) and the four major dimensions of learning identified: (a) Learning to Know (includes acquisition of knowledge and mastery of learning tools such as concentration, memory, and analysis), (b) Learning to Do (concerns occupational, hands-on, and practical skills), (c) Learning to Live Together (concerns learning that strengthens cooperation and social cohesion), and (d) Learning to Be (includes the fulfillment of a person, as an individual/member of a family/citizen). The ELLI-Index combines 36 variables of lifelong learning that reflect a wide range of learning activities, including participation rates in formal education and training, literacy skills (PISA), employees participating in CVT courses, labor market policies expenditure, and community engagement through cultural activities, among others.
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Ioannidou, A. (2014). The Adoption of an International Education Policy Agenda at National Level: Conceptual and Governance Issues. In: Zarifis, G., Gravani, M. (eds) Challenging the 'European Area of Lifelong Learning'. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7299-1_18
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